White House cries Wolf

At our workplace we can read the Financial Times. Some of the stuff in there is quite funny, like this excerpt from today's issue.

"The news that Paul Wolfowitz, the US deputy defence secretary and neo-conservative hawk, is a leading contender to head the World Bank has sent a frisson of fear down the spines of development experts across the globe.
So great is the predicted backlash that one might almost suspect he is only there to secure Europe's acquiescence to a rival candidate.

It also points to a worrying trend. Wolfowitz would not be the first Pentagon alumnus to go from bombing bridges to building them. In 1968 Robert McNamara, Lyndon B. Johnson's defence secretary, went straight from spearheading the Vietnam conflict to a lengthy stint as bank president.

And Wolfowitz's regime change policy could work wonders: instead of vainly trying to alter the approach of corrupt rulers, why not simply topple them?
There is the thorny issue of whether the World Bank's charter precludes such direct political action as, say, invasion. No doubt Alberto Gonzales, the US attorney-general, will find a way round it: perhaps by dubbing the interventions "coercive aid projects" rather than combat operations.